The mysterious iOS 4.x virus

A mysterious announcement of an in the wild iPhone 4.x virus hinting that both non-JB and JB iPhones alike could be wiped by the simple click of a URL. Reposting by numerous websites of the original announcement and Twitter fingers flying to retweet. And then, silence.

While cautious, things weren't quite passing the sniff test. Where was the deconstruction of the virus? Where were the additional details? Where were the first hand reports of those who got nailed? Nowhere.

What interested me most was not who was on the sky is falling bandwagon, but rather who wasn't. Namely Dev-Team. The guys who we've come to trust to bring us all our juicy JB goodness.

The dust has settled, pages that were at the top of the Google stack now missing and mums the word. No retractions, no "Whoops, sorry for the knee jerk gaffe", just silently squelched pages.

Makes you wonder why the original announcement and who was behind it. Was it to scare people away from JB? Was it to scare people away from the sites who take the dedicated JB devs work and pass it off as their own? Was it based on the premise that there's no such thing as bad publicity?

We may never know, but my hat is off to the Dev-Team for keeping their wits about them and not jumping on the misinformation bandwagon.



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